


Rivalry

by winterwhite



Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-22
Updated: 2013-04-03
Packaged: 2017-12-06 04:11:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 13,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/731313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winterwhite/pseuds/winterwhite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sniper is a professional. Spies are spies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Monday found a harsh battle. The little house on the cliffside shook as the RED sniper ducked back into it. There were two demomen and a soldier running outside, and he had to admit if he'd known the other team would be so aggressive he'd have stayed a lot further back. The RED soldier seemed disastrously out of shells. With enemies that close to his cover, he stayed back, counting bullets. He was dangerously low. He edged for the door, the only way in and out, but more BLUs were running up to join the fray and he hung back. He could see the shadow of a BLU soldier coming near. The RED soldier saved him, not by finding a cache but by screaming about thieving hippies, causing the BLU soldier to charge him in a fury. The sounds of battle began to move past. The sniper slid along the wall towards the door, looking for an opportunity to hit them from behind.

"Play dead," said a voice in his ear, and something hit him hard from behind. He fell heavily, rifle falling just within arm's reach, but a BLU pyro's foot landed on it and he stayed exactly as he had fallen. The pyro slipped a little as the weapon skidded underfoot, dancing for a minute to stay upright. "Mmph!"

"My apologies." He heard the spy spinning his knife shut. "Will you put our medic out? He is screaming again." He made it sound as if the medic did nothing else, but the pyro made a good-natured noise like a goose in a barrel and ran out again. "You might as well stay down for a moment. Your soldier is down and your scout ran very fast off the cliff. We have won this time." 

"Like I'd take a spy's word for it," he muttered, licking dust off his teeth, but he could hear his team's sentry exploding and knew their defense was gone. 

"You are alive, are you not? I will pretend you are not here and we will wait the last few seconds. In the meantime, I have one thing to ask for sparing your life." 

The hard boards were surprisingly comfortable. "Of course you do. Go on so I can say no." 

"YOU FAILED!" the announcer's voice filled the air. 

"Only your first na-" 

The pyro came running back in and blasted a hopeful puff of fire into the air. Sniper's shirt, hat, and hair went up from the nearness of the blast. He heard the spy screaming and burning before the pyro really opened up, filling the room with smoke and fire. 

"Y'know," he said, as soon as respawn's whiteness surrounded him again, "you deserved that." 

"A harmless subterfuge when neither of us could make any difference? Please, monsieur. One does not deserve immolation for something so minor." 

The sniper snorted. The spy did not try to press the issue. The sniper went outside, squinting as the last of the harsh daylight caught him in the face. He'd moved his camper further away from the base, but he had no doubt that one of them had found it by now. And with his own team's spy recovering from a setback, that made it likely which of them would be there. 

At first, circling it, he thought he was alone, but as he closed in he realized there was cigarette smoke hanging in the air, and the door was ajar. Damn. He shoved it open and leaned in. 

"Wallaby," said the BLU spy seated on the bed. 

The sniper grunted, ducking inside the little camper. He kicked the door shut and pointedly locked it. "Move over." He collapsed onto the bed, sighing. "Your pyro's a bloody psychopath." 

"So is yours." The BLU spy pushed him until he rolled over. A warm hand dropped onto his sore shoulder and rubbed the spot where the muscle hurt worst at the end of the day. "But you are in one piece." 

"Mm." He hadn't been stabbed in the back for weeks, and the nagging worry was easy to ignore. "Caught you trying to go through my papers, didn't he?"

The spy's strong fingers stilled for just a moment, the only confirmation he needed. "It is a very small thing, you know." 

"Too small. Too personal. Ask me again when this is over." He relaxed, slowly, under the spy's hands. "I blacked it out on them, you know," he finally said. The spy made a curious little noise while leaning all his weight into the stubborn muscles knotted on his lower back. "It's why he doesn't know it either." 

"He said he did." 

"Yeah? Take it from me he doesn't, or why's he trying to get it out of me? As you." 

"It will be over someday." 

"BLU and RED, or your fight with him?" 

"Both of them. You'll let clients settle their own scores, I'll leave secrets where they lie-"

"Speaking of lying-" 

"Important secrets, then. The kind men will gladly kill for." 

"Bloody pyros will gladly kill for anything." The sniper stretched a little, all too aware of all the places in his back that a knife could find before he could so much as turn his head. 

A gently muttered curse. "I must go. My team expects me." 

"Saw my watch, did you? Well, you pick the word." 

The spy bent down and murmured in his ear. When he looked up, he was alone. He waved a broom around before he went to bed anyway, just to be sure. Bloody spies. 

**

Tuesday the battle raged back and forth without either side getting a foothold. He was chased out of his favorite nests, and had to scour the place for a spot that no one would expect. He came around a corner to see himself pushing a spy against the wall, locked in an embrace. He considered his options carefully before throwing a jar at them both and running away. 

Wisely, no one visited him that night.

**

"You know," the voice said behind him on Wednesday morning as he walked from his camper, idly checking his gear, "you will never be able to trust him." 

"Course not." The strap on his rifle was getting worn, but it would last the month, easily.

"Never. Even after the war, however it ends, you will still know many things that someone with another employer would like to uncover." 

"Speaking of uncovering, if you're going to disguise yourself as me just to carry out some sick fantasy-" 

"It's my responsibility to be sure my team's best interests are protected." 

"I'm a professional. You know that. Try to remember which of us was actually checking his tonsils yesterday, and which one was doing his bloody job." The angry hiss he got for that made him decide it was better not to push it and risk the spy's reporting his suspicions in a rage, but the spy began talking again halfway to the base on safer subjects. 

**

Thursday night he settled down by the engineer's campfire. "What'd you need, Truckie?" 

"Just noticed something. Spies are actin' awful funny lately." 

"Both absolute loonies," he said, opening two bottles of beer and passing one over. 

"Well, I've started shooting at you every time I see you, 'cause nowadays it's usually the BLU spy. But sometimes, and this is the confusin' part, sometimes it's the RED spy." 

"I've gotten better at hearing him coming, but the other team's getting sharper at finding me. I get spotted running around a lot more. Think our spy is just trying to get the drop on him."

"That's a spy for you. They just hate bein' outdone." The sniper laughed. The demoman stirred, sat up, and began arguing with the minisentry about whether or not it should be flashing. When the sniper left, the minisentry was winning. 

He approached his camper very slowly, found a spy in red clothing had staked it out, and almost managed to get close without being heard. The spy turned, slipping a hand into his jacket for his gun. He said nothing, which meant he was, indeed, RED. 

"Guess I have to move already." 

"You know, Mr. Mundy," the spy said deliberately, "you and I are on the same team, and you do not possess any secrets that I do not already know." 

He thought about gunmetal and cigarette smoke and knives and trust, thought about a BLU spies' eyes as they backed away from each other rather than fight.

"Perhaps I would like to see you after this is all over." 

He thought about leverage and who cared for whom. "Don't you have someone to get back to, once it ends?" 

"Perhaps." There was suddenly a strong hand at his jaw, surprising him enough that he didn't immediately react. "Perhaps you are a professional and could leave it all on the battlefield, but someone she is fond of has taken this all very personally indeed." 

He reached up and caught the man's wrist, intending to pull it away, but the spy didn't let his hand move so easily. "What would I be doing driving around the Outback with a spy?"

"I think, Mr. Mundy, that we are more alike than you like to think." The spy kissed him. He might have expected it, but it felt real, much more passionate than he'd expected from a man who'd sent their scout into a week-long rage. He did not pull away as quickly or as sharply as he had planned. 

**

Friday he was in a headlock with a knife to his throat. "Apricot," a voice said in his ear. BLU, then, despite the RED sleeve he'd glimpsed.

"Not on the job!" he said. 

A gloved hand slipped under his rucked shirt to settle on his side. "Should I come later, then? How are you to be sure I am not there when another spy is; do you have an appointment-book, perhaps?" 

"I didn't invite him, he shows up. You know a thing or two about that." 

The spy's breath was warm in his ear, tone so low it slid down his spine. "Do you know what it does to me, to think that you and he can walk together whenever you please? That our employers would not think of it in the slightest? And now I find him touching you, and more? Do you know what that does to me?" 

"Didn't I just get him?" asked the RED engineer from the doorway. "Good gosh almighty, they're spawnin' faster than tadpoles today. I'm out of pistol ammo, but I can toss him some buckshot if you like. Or I got a wrench." 

"I have questions, first. You should leave us to discuss the answers." 

"Just holler if you want his head beaten in," the engineer said amiably, and clomped back out. 

"You know it's just for now," the sniper muttered. "You know there's things I'd only tell you. Look... it's Lawrence, all right?" 

"Lawrence." Even so low he could hear the triumph. 

"Yes. But we can't talk more now. Finish what you've started here and let's get back to it, all right?" 

The spy's hand was shaking just a little, the sharp edge catching on his skin. " _Merde._ I am sorry, I am sorry, I have been avoiding you. Don't just let him _touch_ you like that again." 

The sniper turned his head. "We'll talk later. Word's feather. Just be quick. If the engineer comes back with a shotgun and no patience I'll have a lot more to explain than you will." 

It hurt astonishingly for a very brief moment, but respawn blurred the memory and he sat up, rubbing at his throat. 

The RED spy, who had been straightening his cuffs, offered a hand. A little unshaky still, he took it. The spy reached to where his fingers lay, quirking a brow when the sniper knocked his hand aside.

"I watch your back in many ways," he said. "No knife of mine has found it, in metaphor or otherwise. If only you'd remember that." 

The sniper stood, quietly, watching him go.


	2. Spy Math

He gave a simple ultimatum. 

"If it interferes with your work, that puts you in danger. Which puts me in danger, because if we're caught you're not going down alone. Things are getting a little dicey, ey? Need them to settle down, or I don't think any of this can happen right now."

"What?" Gloved fingers brushed away from his shoulders as if stunned. "You would just go on as if nothing had ever happened?" 

"Until our contracts are up, if I have to. Don't want to have to." 

It worked. The BLU spy went viciously after the intelligence, capturing it repeatedly while the RED spy waited to catch him in the usual spots and the RED sniper was still unable to recover any of his favorite nests. A series of losses snapped the RED spy back to business, and for a week it had all been typical rush and battle. So the sniper, when he dropped a quiver full of arrows with respawn-unsteady fingers, was surprised to find a pair of work boots clomping into his space. He looked up to a frowning engineer. The battle was over, but the man looked as sober as if it were about to begin.

"I'm a little confused. Things just don't add up." 

A backpack with a bugle in it hit the floor at their feet. The last man dead had respawned a step behind the engineer. "I do not have even one PhD but I do know that if you are confused than whatever is confusing you would definitely confuse me! And sniper is looking confused at me! It is confusing me right now! And if you are confused and I am confused and he is confused, we will spread the confused contamination to every single member of this team! And we will not win this war in a state of confusion so your orders are to sort it out here and now!"

"Right, pal. Just let me think." The engineer's goggles tilted a little towards the soldier, who was standing riveted, staring through the inside of his helmet. "Okay, okay, good. Got it!" He spread yellow-gloved hands with a wide smile. "There, all taken care of." 

The sniper didn't risk silence. "Squared away, mate!"

"My head feels clearer too! Good work." The soldier stomped out.

The engineer's expression settled back into stonier lines. "He's got one thing right. We need things real simple-like. Maybe we should talk later." 

"Sure thing," the sniper agreed, and watched him boost his toolkits onto his shoulders. "Uh, need a hand?"

"Got it, thanks." 

The sniper nodded to his back and slipped out to fresh air. He was not interrupted on his walk, and his camper was silent. It was both a little lonely and a great relief. One spy was all right, two... no. 

He kept a respectful distance from the campsite until dark fell and he saw the fire that welcomed visitors. He went down, a little uncertain, but Scout wasn't there and the Demoman had obviously found something else to do with his evening. "Hey, Truckie." 

The engineer looked up, but said nothing for a moment. Then his lips pressed into a line. "Told you not to call me that, son." 

"Sorry. Forgot." Sniper crouched down by the fire, not liking to already have the engineer already rubbed the wrong way. 

"It's nothin'. So anyway... found this out there. Maybe you can tell me which of your fancy rifles this casing's from." 

"Could be the machina or the heatmaker." He tipped his glasses down for a closer look. "Might not be mine. I don't handload the bullets for those, but it looks like this one's been recycled." 

"All right. Thanks." The casing went back into the engineer's pocket. "So what's confusin' me is the math." 

"How's that? We got two spies." 

"Uh hunh. So if I find a BLU spy in a headlock by a RED spy, and I leave him to it, what's a BLU spy doin' runnin' by me to mess with my machines? When I got that sorted out and went up to have a look, I was too late for anythin' to still be there. But if there's anyone added to one team, someone's added to the other team, unless one side is gettin' pounded into the ground and reinforcements get sent before the other side catches word. We've been at a dead heat for weeks, and then we lost hard once and things went back to normal. So I count three spies, but the math don't add up." 

"That ringer thing our spy was so proud of?" 

"Maybe. But you'd think if anyone was goin' to be careful about that, it's our spy." 

"He gets overconfident."

"True, maybe that's one squared away. But overconfident don't account for what he did next." 

"Yeah?" 

"I asked you to carry a little gadget for me. Little prototype I've been workin' on, breaks real easy. Somethin' that would just let me listen so I knew when you got stabbed, 'cause if I can't keep track of whose spies are creepin' around where, I want a few seconds warning. And you agreed." 

"But I didn't." 

"Yeah, I figured that out when I hear you muttering about mercy kills in one ear and yellin' at the enemy demo over my head. Sound quality's pretty bad, but it don't duplicate. So I stuck my head out to look. That's when you," his even voice slowed a little, "shot the," he tilted his head, and the sniper wished he could see his eyes, "the enemy sniper, and the signal stopped." 

"So you gave it to the BLU spy and he, what, spent a whole battle as me?" 

"Don't think a spy can get away with that, and it was in our side's sealed area, where they can't get in. No, I'd say I gave it to the RED spy and he planted it on the BLU sniper. And that's a mite alarmin'. You two look pretty close but he'd have to have spent the whole day chuggin' scrumpy to make a mistake like that. Not to mention he spent a whole conversation pretendin' to be you, and that's just not polite. An' I might not even have noticed if you hadn't been yellin'." 

"Bow's short-range, there's no use being quiet," the Sniper explained. "Maybe the BLU spy stole it off the RED spy." 

"Then how'd he know what it was? No, I let our spy in on a project that might change things for our team, and he went and sabotaged it." 

"You never mentioned that project." 

"Well, I might have been told not to work on it too much. Somethin' about the technology interferin' with respawn if I made one for everyone. It's why only Scout has the one he has. An' I don't rightly see how that can be, but I can't argue respawn breaks 'em. So I'm just holdin' off on more developments until I know exactly what's goin' on. But you know things are funny, and I know things are funny, so I was hopin' you could tell me any other incidents you may have noticed occurin'." 

"Just them arguing, RED disguised as me." 

"You can tell 'em apart? How'd you know?" 

The sniper thought carefully. He'd seen himself, and a BLU. "Guess I didn't. But the one disguised as me must have known, cause he would have known the other wasn't him." 

"It's that disturbin'? You got a look on your face I ain't seen before."

Sniper had been trying to think through which of them had been slamming the other spy against the wall, and whether it was obvious it wasn't him. What that meant if it did. But he saved those thoughts for later. "Yeah, I like to know what my face is doing when I'm not around." 

"Exactly. I'm startin' to wonder if someone isn't gettin' ready for a little character assassination, 'cause you know by way of profession the other kind ain't as effective with this respawn business. Boy howdy, were the disguise improvements a mistake. Seems like whatever those crazy sons of bitches are up to, it's comin' at your expense." 

"They might move on to imitating someone else, if it's too obvious you're bothered." Or if the RED spy got bored. There was no way to take the puzzle from the Engineer, so the best outcome was that the RED spy would decide blackmail material on them both was worth more than throwing them to the wolves. In the worst case, he'd do just that.

"Whatever's goin' on, it's startin' to look like you need someone in your corner who'll help try to solve such a conundrum. This spy math, spies disguised as spies, spies disguised as snipers mess? I'm startin' to think I need a whole new PhD to sort it out. But that don't matter, I can get one. And hey, in the meanwhile," the Engineer's voice stayed perfectly friendly, "I darn well told you not to call me 'Truckie' anymore, so the next time I hear it out of your mouth I'm gonna figure you for a goddamn spy and feed you my wrench and two boots." 

"Right." It was like the password business he had with the BLU spy. He wondered what other little checks would spontaneously spring up, and how soon until the RED spy got around them. 

"Thanks." 

After that, he wanted little but a word with the BLU spy. No one was at his camper, and for an hour, then, two, no one came. He went down the mountain to walk along the shore, at least until a blue dot appeared on the sand, crawled steadily forward, and stopped a foot away from the toe of his boot. He turned and went the way he had come. 

There were no knocks on his door, and although his teammates complained about the spy, he saw no sign of him on the battlefield. The RED spy was also conspicuously absent. The intelligence was picked up many times, but each side never got it out of the other's base. 

On the third day with no word, the Sniper began to worry.


	3. Chapter 3

The sniper sat, patiently, looking down the long cliffside to the water below. A few pitiful trails tracked back and forth across its face, but for the most part it was a long, steep fall, cut here and there with slashes of light from bulb-strung wires descending to the empty docks. The salt air lifted to him, but this far from the water he couldn't hear the waves. The sparse trees were thinner on this side, where the wind roared through the high cliffs from the sea. The other side was more wooded, but then, that was where the BLU sniper liked to go, and why push for a little space? This was a rare night of peace. The other mercenaries had gone drinking. Tr- Engie had come out to invite him. He'd answered that he'd ride with the medic, but had chosen to stay behind, waiting for any word. Worse than a girl left at home, he thought sourly. There were only two others left behind: the RED spy and the RED soldier. 

And the RED soldier was patrolling. Not that it was bothering the sniper, he could tell exactly where the man was at the moment. So could the little scurrying animals, and the birds trying to sleep. The sound was getting closer, breaking first into individual syllables and then into barked words as the man trotted a stone's throw over his head. "One two three four! One two three four! One two three four!" He went by, echoing a little as he neared the wooden walls outside the empty battlefield. Then he paused. "HEE-YEP!" And he started back again. If he craned his neck a little, the sniper could see a few of the windows of the base. The RED spy gamely turned another light on in one of them and walked in front of the curtains. He did not walk by again. The sniper could imagine him going back to his book clear of the windows, having done just enough that the soldier could see he'd done something. A corner of the sniper's mouth tugged up. The price of staying behind was helping Soldier make the base look full of people. At least, if you could be found. 

"Butterscotch," the night said clearly to his left. He jumped a little. A hand was already lying over his in case he startled as far as to fall. The touch slid away a moment later, and he heard the spy settle down. A hand traced from his shoulder down to his hip and rested there. He let out a long breath, relaxing to lean against the other man's ribs. The spy rested his chin on the sniper's head. The sniper thought that he wouldn't have needed the password. No one else invited him close so easily, made it so simple to share space. The wind sifted over the rocks and the stars shone overhead, and the spy grumbled a little under his breath at the rocks at his back and shifted more to wrap over the sniper. He silently bet to himself that if it were convenient, the spy would be digging an elbow in now, just so the outdoorsman were as inconvenienced as he. 

"Worried," he said finally, and was too relieved to kick himself for it. 

"I am fine. Tired, perhaps." 

"Did it work? Or was there some other business?" 

"Both." The spy tugged one of his gloves off and slid it into the sniper's hair. "We are fortunate. The latest... upheaval... seems to have drawn attention from both teams." 

"Thought so. We've been at Upward for longer than usual." The spy made a little noise of agreement. They sat quietly while the soldier's chant approached again. The sniper made out motion on the cliffside below, twitches of brush. Something hunting birds, most likely. He sat up, turning his head to watch the RED spy flick another light on. His distinctive silhouette made a short pass in front of the blinds. "HEEYUP!"

"I am almost as crazy, coming up here at night," the spy complained softly. The sniper was leaning to the edge of their perch, looking for the source of movement before he settled down again. The track below stretched for a brief period before vanishing behind a roll of the cliffside, and for a moment he could clearly see a lanky figure walking across it. He stiffened, then grabbed the rock with one hand, about to drop down to the next spur of rock and confront the man. He was sure he could have scrambled down to the path even at night, but the spy took his actions for an overbalance and grabbed him in both arms, hauling him back. His head struck the rock so hard one of his ears rang. 

"That was bleeding me down there!" he gasped when he was sure they were both safe. 

The spy said something filthy that, by this time, he could translate with a little guesswork. His tone was sharp but as soft as he could make it, although the soldier's chant was far away. "Is he looking for you, or us?" 

"What? Neither, it's not him, he's back in the base," the sniper answered. "I saw him by the window just now. I saw me down there. Could he have given a disguise kit to someone else?" 

" _Non_. They were made useless for anyone else after our demoman-"

"Oh, yes, that." He could bitterly remember the mess that resulted when the BLU demoman had disguised himself, wandered aimlessly around the battlefield drunkenly trying to decide what team he was on for a round while RED shredded the undermanned BLU side, and finally poured an entire bottle of scrumpy into the medic's pack. For the rest of the day it kept popping off second-long, painful-looking, spontaneous ubercharges on the medic and no one else. BLU, with its prodigal demoman sawed through respawn and to relative sobriety, had ripped them apart. "Right." 

"But what did you see?" 

"Me. My hat, my shirt, my bloody gun. You must have seen something."

"I have been very careful not to look down this precipice. For nothing but to find you would I have come this far in the dark." 

The spy's words would come back to him later when he was trying to sleep, or hang in his ear when he sat hunched with his rifle, and make him want to kick himself for not showing that he'd even heard. "Who in hell was that?" 

"You can't have seen him for long. The mind plays tricks with the dark." 

"He was under the light," the sniper said stubbornly. "I saw what I saw." 

"Did he seem to know we were up here?" 

"No, just walked along. There's nothing over there, really. Your base is on the other side." The sniper grabbed his chin, flicking on his lighter, and looked at the spy's eyes. The spy winced, holding up a hand, but he'd seen enough to calm the last bits of paranoia. "Sorry, spook." 

"You should be. That was my night vision, and now neither of us will be able to see anyone." 

"We snipers look alike. Maybe one got sent in to join our team, got lost somehow." Impossible, since no outdoorsman would miss the giant mine stuck on top of the peninsula, or be trying to find the base in the dark. He studied the path again, picturing the man on it to reassure himself that he'd been close enough to see clearly. "Have you gotten a single person added to your team?" 

"No. Not with our employers' mutual distraction." He tugged at the sniper's shoulders. "Stop leaning, _mon cheri_. I cannot see what you are doing." 

"I could have caught up with him," the sniper answered, settling back again. The shock had passed. "RED spy's in our base, no one else casts that shadow." 

"If you saw him and were touching me, it accounts for anyone who could disguise themselves. Perhaps it is a lack of sleep, or perhaps your mind is quick to paint pictures from small things after all your watching for cloaked spies, or the RED soldier's old roommate is making trouble once again. If he did not seem to know anyone was here, there is nothing to be done right now. We'll break our necks if we try to search." His fingers slid into the sniper's hair, and curled a little, as if otherwise the sniper might climb down after all.

"Back to my camper," the sniper said, pushing him gently. "It's too crowded out here." The soldier's chant approached again. The spy went slowly back along the trail. The sniper could hear him stumbling and stubbing his toes and swearing, and wished that he were able to get easily past into the lead. But they quickly came to easier ground and cut down to an old roadside the miners had made, and soon enough the sniper was pushing the door of his camper open. He paused a moment, trying to guess what the spy saw. It was shabby, and old, and the coffee stain on the wall had never quite come out, and perhaps he could pick up a bit if he were going to keep having company. But with the door shut and the stars and darkness outside, he hoped the spy felt as safe as he did. 

"I wish I'd seen what you saw," the spy said. He tugged a little at one side of the sniper's vest. "I could have told you all the ways you were different."


	4. Chapter 4

He was later than he expected getting back to the base. The others had already come back. The demoman was often sober in the earlier parts of the day, but now he was sleeping passed out in the hallway, while the soldier had gone to bed. There was movement in the Engineer's workshop, and the scout was rummaging around trying to find his baseball bat and yelling something about the medic and plates. The sniper listened for long enough to be sure this wouldn't lead to a fight, and then walked to the rooms in which the RED spy had been staging his appearances.

No spy was there. He looked carefully at the light switches, the carpets, trying to see if perhaps something had been placed to switch the lights on a timer or move something in front of the window. The room seemed innocent, and he switched off the lights wondering if this was how madness started. He walked back down the hall, stepping carefully over the sleeping demoman. A powerful grip caught his ankle and jerked his feet out from under him. He landed on his hands, skinning his palms a little on the carpet.

"Holy dooley!"

"My boot! You found my-" the demoman cocked his head. "That's not my boot, not my boot, it's too small." The demoman let go of his foot in disappointment. "Ah, it was a good try, lad! Thanks for looking for my boot." The sniper frowned at the demoman's feet, both of which were wearing low-cut boots, the same as he'd always seen. "That's a long face, laddie. What's the problem, then?" 

"Seeing things," the sniper said. The demoman made a sort of thoughtful noise and waved a hand expansively. "Thought I saw myself for a minute." 

The demoman's head snapped up, eye wide. "That's a terrible thing! A terrible thing indeed! If I were you I'd... I'd... I'm goin' to bed now." 

"Right." The sniper watched him trying to get to his feet, losing interest halfway through to grab the sniper's boot and try to get a look at the sole. Rather than hop, the sniper helped him stand up. "Night, then." 

"It's a dopel- doppa- dorpelgangnangnaa." The demoman looked thoughtful, then belched. "It means you're going to die, lad." 

"Not as often as you tomorrow if you don't get some sleep." 

"Terrible omen, seeing yourself. It means SPY! That lamp's a bloody spy! Or it could be. Bloody spies." The sniper let out a long breath, sheathing his kukri again. He'd been safely forgotten again anyway, the demoman already starting down the hall. A light flicked on under the nearest door. The pyro leaned into the hall, gave him an accusing stare with black lenses, and then closed it again with a slam. 

"Spy?" boomed a voice behind him. 

"No," the sniper said. Heavy looked half-asleep and was clutching a chair in one hand. "He's just seeing things. What's going on there?" He waved at the pyro's door. 

"Demoman broke the bottle Pyro was saving for a," the heavy said something in Russian and pitched a hand in a throwing gesture. "Little pyro was not happy. Jumped at demoman, took demoman's boot. Doctor had to tell Pyro he would be walking if he could not behave like," Heavy frowned, and said something else that Sniper filled in mentally. The giant of a man was always slower with English after he'd been drinking. "You know?" 

"Good," said the sniper. "After the time Engie tried to build that laundry machine, well, I thought something new was eating our clothes." 

"Turbines not for washing machines," Heavy boomed sadly. "Lost favorite shirt. Heard little men lost more. Should grow to wear proper clothes for men!" He laughed so hard Sniper wondered if the pyro were about to come out again, then caught himself on the doorframe, calming. "Well, if there are no spies, there is nothing to do but sleep until tomorrow." He added something else and shut the door again. 

The sniper backtracked to Engie's workroom and knocked on the door. "Engie? Hey, Engie?" There was no reply, but the beeping noises and occasional clunking inside went on. For a moment he thought about yelling, but there was a good chance the engineer had fallen asleep in the middle of his latest project. Best to leave him to his dreams and laugh at his blueprint-copy face tomorrow. He didn't keep a room in the base, but he tended to know where the spare cots were for the odd times he didn't want to leave. Best to catch some sleep himself if he wanted the battle to go well tomorrow. 

**

The battle was not going well. 

The best way to dispose of RED's yearly top-secret war data and scrap projects was to load it into an old canister on a cart, weld it so the enemy spy had no hope of getting it out in the battle, and then wheel it up to the mine and tip it in. Sniper privately thought that it was stupid to bring it onto the battlefield in the first place, but no one had asked him. 

The battlefield was a mess. Sniper had personally taken out the heavy and the medic, but that was too long ago now, they must be back. Scout and Soldier had both appeared in seconds of each other to flash him contradictory hand signals before running off in different directions, and no matter which of them might be a spy, he'd seen RED's medic going off in a direction neither had indicated. He was weighing scenarios in his mind and running for the mine pit when he saw it. A fine blue dot creeping up over the hillside, wandering away from his head. The enemy sniper was close by, and hadn't seen him. Trying to get distance to countersnipe would get him cut down on the way or an unexpected BLU interruption. Huntsman was better than rifle for close range. Better to close in.

The sounds of battle muted as he realized his plan. He moved in close to the wall of the nearest building and cut to where the dot must have come from. There was the door, and he found the stairs empty. He put an arrow to the string and rolled around the corner. The BLU sniper, warned by sound or instinct, was looking up when he came in range and threw himself back just as the arrow left the string. Cheated, he nearly snarled. The arrow cut through empty space and buried itself in the wall. Kukris came to hand in the same moment, almost the same gesture. He felt no caution, knowing he could still cut the man through before he had his footing and balance. He charged in for the kill.

Time seemed to dilate with his adrenaline. Through a scope they had some distance, although they were also so evenly matched that a duel could waste half a battle before one got a finishing shot. With mismatched weapons they weren't in sync. But face to face, it just got eerie. He was the sum of all his experiences. No one else could have them. No one else could be him. Moments like this were a parody of his life, some kind of sick joke.

This time the punchline was sharp and immediate in his back, driving the air out of his lungs. Something caught him as he fell to his knees, easing the drop, although by a moment of agony he knew he'd just been stabbed again. The floorboards drifted up to meet him, the grain of each one shining under a light layer of dust and sand, and he'd never seen anything so beautiful or perfect in his life.

He woke up with a throbbing headache and without shock-enhanced appreciation for flooring. He coughed twice, picking up his hat and settling it on his head. Right, going to have to hunt down the spy first and then move on to the enemy sniper. And it was going to be the best shot of his career; Spy was going to wake up in respawn without any idea what had just happened. He ran down the checklist and realized his breathing was still ragged with anger. What was that, betrayal? Nonsense, it was the job. He set his breathing evenly, made sure his hands were steady. Feelings were just going to get him killed again, only faster this time. 

He pinned the enemy scout to a wall in five minutes of leaving the saferoom, and put an arrow into his team's scout thinking that it must be the Blu spy. The scout yelped in surprise at the sting, and the arrow harmlessly disintegrated. The scout shot a wild few pistol bullets at the sniper, one a brief beesting in his arm, before he saw the dead BLU scout and ran back looking for more enemies. 

The sniper followed. Spy liked close spaces, he'd be in the hallways listening for pyros and hoping to take out anyone pushing ahead of their team. He came around a corner, looking down the stairs, and saw two RED spies standing close. For a moment his heart gave an uncomfortable thump, but he waited for a hint. He might know BLU, but with both RED, they were equally masked.

So he stood with an arrow on the string, watching them. They were arguing in soft undertones, both empty-handed, hissing words in French that went by too quickly and angrily for him to separate the sounds. One grabbed the tie of the other and dragged his face close. 

"JARATE!" 

He ran back the way he had come, out the door and, as he'd predicted, into his counterpart's bullet. 

**

"I wish you would throw some other fluid," said BLU from the darkness by the camper. "I know you must short the cloak somehow, but why not coffee?" 

"Can't waste coffee." The spy came into the light, glanced around once more, and mumbled their last agreed codeword with less than his usual enthusiasm. "Something bothering you?" 

"Sometimes things... get away from me." The spy made a fumbling gesture with his hands. "I asked to see a copy of my contract today. To... confirm." 

"Yeah?" 

"It didn't have the finishing date I remember. And it was not... it was in Portugese. I would have remembered a document in Portugese, I think. I speak some Spanish but it is not the same." 

"So you think they just forged a replacement?" 

"It would seem something like that happened along the way. Perhaps you should check your own." 

"Figured as much," the sniper said. "I will. But I didn't think it would be as easy as just walking away." He glanced up. "There something on my face?" 

"Are you..." the spy licked his lips. "Are you angry?" 

"Why should I be angry? Just another fight, another day, we'll kill each other again tomorrow." 

"Come inside," the spy said, carefully, like he was feeling his way. For a minute Sniper was about to refuse, about to say he'd just sit there with his lantern, but he realized he'd been distracted enough to just sit where he'd been standing, in the dirt. There was something almost shameful about his distraction, and he got up jerkily, shutting the lantern off and following the spy into the dim light of the camper. The spy offered a couple of careful questions, slow and soothing enough to be very irritating. Sniper sorted through his options, found none of them quite right, and dragged the spy in by his collar and kissed him. Spy made a little noise of protest, not what he wanted to hear, and there was a jerky moment that ended with his lip bleeding.

Somehow the sting of pain and the shove to his chest and the weight he'd been carrying since that conversation came together, and in a sudden jumble of arms and legs they hit the floor. That surprised noise was Spy, so that growl must have been him. He yanked the quiver off his back, tossing it out of reach but keeping one arrow in his hand, and pinned one of Spy's sleeves to the floor, holding him down with his weight. That fancy knife of Spy's was in his hand, closed, and Sniper slammed his hand against the floor hard enough to jar it from his fingers. He stilled, not wanting it to go this far but not knowing how to set it back on the right course. 

"Stop," he said, desperately. He realized his fingers were tight enough to bruise and eased his grip. Spy was panting. So was he. "I can't keep seeing-" He broke off. 

"You're jealous," Spy said wonderingly. 

"What are you doing with him?" The little he could see of Spy's skin was flushed and his eyes were dark. He was breathing more heavily than that brief struggle explained. Sniper wondered what the hell else he expected from a relationship that started off with them trying to kill each other. Oh, Spy was always trying to be soft and careful, give the safety he offered no one else, but it was one side of their thin coin. He should have known at the first sign of trouble they'd go back to this, but there was a sick safety in this familiar ground, and a heat that was not just rage. 

Spy tugged, gently, at his wrist. Sniper thought that he should have let go, and this time, he opened his hand. Spy reached up, cupping the side of his face, murmuring something low, a phrase he barely could translate but that eased the tight knot in his chest. "It is just another part of the fight, as real as knives to us, a push and pull to throw the other off his balance. It is not like you. There is no one like you." 

"When I found you, the other time... was that you?" 

The spy took no more than a moment to realize he spoke of the kiss. "I thought he would kill me with your face. He knew I was bracing myself for that. As I said... it is all part of the game, all," he tapped the Sniper's temple, "here." 

"It got there," Sniper growled. The spy winced. Sniper leaned down, into his hand. "It's been there for bloody days. You can't... you have to stop." 

"If I let him think it is important to me, he will undoubtedly twist the knife." Spy's fingers slid into his hair. "You will have to step in." 

Sniper's train of thought, which had been gaining velocity back towards rage, skipped the rails and rolled. "What?" 

"No, no teeth necklaces, it will only make him worse. Be more... receptive to him. I understand. I will hate it. But I can bear seeing it. You cannot." 

"Think he's going to know I don't mean it!"

"Yes, but believe me, it will not be obvious as to why. He will take some time trying to figure it out, and if he thinks he can draw you away, mind games between us will not be so important." The corners of the spy's eyes narrowed, and Sniper knew he was laughing a little. "And it will not be the first time you have seemed conflicted." 

Sniper took a few steadying breaths, his head a little clearer. He apologetically reached to pull the arrow from his sleeve. Spy reached across and caught his hand. "Leave it." They could both see the trembling in Sniper's fingers. "I know. I know." 

The back of Spy's hand hit the carpet just by his knife, anchored there by Sniper's weight, but Spy did not flip the blade into his palm.


	5. Chapter 5

Sniper requested a copy of his contract. Spoke to his parents, although the usual fight started up before he had a chance to test their reaction to his coming back. He couldn't quite imagine it, and wasn't sure how to broach the subject anyway; after all, even if he left RED, he'd always have the opportunity for more jobs. 

Two days later, during a ceasefire, the RED spy was at his elbow when he got up from the table at dinner, holding out a sealed envelope. Sniper took it, slipping it into a vest pocket. Spies were like cats: if it seemed interesting, he wouldn't be able to read it in peace until he was alone. That didn't seem as if it would be for a while. The spy just strolled with him out into the evening air. Sniper stopped near the cliff, still in plain sight of the base. 

"So how different is the other sniper from me?" he asked. "You know, close up." 

"Through the shoulders, most alike?" The spy shrugged. "He is a target, nothing more." Now that he thought about it, Sniper couldn't recall anyone talking about the resemblances between the two teams for a long time. Even the scout, who rarely stopped talking about himself, said nothing about the other. He knew the other engineer had replaced some part of his body with mechanical bits, which made him like their own engineer a lot better, and the other demoman had only one leg. But that was just... surface differences. He drummed his fingers on the huntsman thoughtfully. "Why do you ask?" 

"Been thinking about it." 

The spy laughed, a dry little sound. "You have not even seen my face. Have you seen his?" 

He lifted and dropped one shoulder. The thing had been taken off, a time or two, in dim light or darkness. But while they were still at war... well, the nightmares of Spy dying over and over were already bad enough without having more detail. And he didn't think that wouldn't spill over to waking time, either. He hadn't asked how Spy dealt. He already knew: apologies and painstaking softness when they could afford it. They were going to have to work everything out again once they were out. None of that was the RED spy's business. 

"I thought as much," the RED spy said. "You know, if I were him, I would resign myself to a little more trust." He looked away, towards the horizon, just as Sniper opened his mouth to say he knew that was a lie, he'd seen the pictures. He managed to bite the words off in time. "I don't know where to begin if I were you. Probably I would start with how I showed my feelings. Anything but flinging jars of my own filth at people and running away." 

"I don't know who's who," the sniper said. "You know, because of your recently discovered tendencies towards disguising yourself as him. Can't go stabbing my own teammate, even if it doesn't leave you bleeding. Better to let you sort it out, if you even do that anymore." The spy gave him a narrow look. He shifted a little, looking toward the horizon himself. The huntsman still felt awkward in its hang at his back. 

"I could have destroyed you by now," the spy said matter-of-factly. "Many times over. Do not think that my own proximity to this... madness... would be enough to sink me." The sniper privately marked that as a bluff, but there was no point to enraging the man; he could drive him to it. "The moment that you hand over anything, he could use it and vindicate himself, done and over with." 

"You've said I have the minimum of RED secrets, you know more. What does he want, maps of a few bases that are probably a flipped drawing of his own?" 

"Perhaps he has realized his sniper teammate, who I have scarred once, is only good at long range. With you gone it would open up more strategies, give them an advantage for a while, make their daily war easier. And perhaps your replacement would be less skilled. It has happened before." 

Sniper nodded, slowly. Their scout had been sent to train another team for a while, and his replacement had been a nightmare, running around the battlefield cheering, demanding dispensers, and leaving his gun at the base while he tried to kill people with an old frying pan. Worse, they'd had him for months before RED had taken him back. But the RED spy couldn't really think it was a good idea, or he'd have used it on some other BLU. "Can see how you'd think of that." 

The spy clapped a hand to his head. "That's all? _Merde!_ " He looked up again, enunciating each word, his accent clearing away. "I am trying to help you." His gaze slid along the Sniper's vest, stopping at the pocket. When he looked back up there was something ruthless in his eyes, a little difference in the set of his jaw. Sniper had the same jangle in his nerves that he did when a poisonous snake slid along the edge of his blind, or when he was setting up a shot and realized he'd just let the dot of his laser sight drift into the target's sight. 

"If you think it's a secret, you can try to take it off me," Sniper said sharply, just to jolt the feeling free. 

"A playground bet, _monsieur_? We can both do better." The RED spy clapped a hand on his shoulder, his strong fingers quite warm through his thin gloves. "But I will leave you to your letter. I have affairs of my own to look after."

Sniper couldn't remember how, exactly, he answered. He had more on his mind. He didn't think it was wise to go into his camper, since the spy could easily cut ahead of him. He climbed a boulder, instead, and sat on the peak where no one could look over his shoulder. Then he unfolded the letter and scanned the copy of his contract. Standard, really, with a few clauses here and there, but legally binding. The date it expired was exactly as he remembered. That was his handwriting, perhaps a little larger than he usually wrote it. If it was a forgery, RED had spared no expense hiring an expert. But he'd never seen the document before in his life. 

He put the copy back in his pocket. There was one person he could ask about the ins and outs of RED's paperwork and contracts... and that man was busy scheming about how to help the sniper, possibly with a bullet. It was looking more and more as if walking away were out of the question. 

He skimmed the added clauses a few times. Well. There was one person he could ask. 

**

"No, no. It is a terrible idea! You cannot raise a clone army here." The medic shoved his paper, covered with handwritten notes, back into his chest, and folded his arms. "I thought of it. There is no guarantee at all that they would grow up to be as useful as the," he snapped his fingers impatiently, "what is the word? Why do I not have it? The first one."

"That's what this is about? Clones?"

"You did not come up with this notion?" Medic leaned a little closer. "Did you find some of my old notes? You are spending too much time around the spy! You become like him yourself!" 

"No, it was off some old legal documents, that's all. Inherited things." 

"Well, if that is about animal husbandry," the medic sniffed, "that is different, I suppose. But yes, the terminology discusses the cutting edge of biology. It suggests allowing the procedure to continue, but there is not enough to say for what purpose. Why are you so pale?" The medic brightened a little. "Perhaps you feel unwell?" 

"Have you ever thought the other medic is a little too like you?"

"Put the idea out of your head! There is nothing that would make us so very alike in all of science!" The medic laughed heartily. "No, it must be coincidence, or why would all the little details match exactly?"

"Right," the sniper said. "Hadn't thought of that." 

"That is why you do not practice medicine," the medic said. "But while you are here... there is something you could help me with." 

**

For a moment when he met RED spy in the hallway he thought that he would be brushed past and dismissed, but the man paused a moment, looking at his face. "What happened?" 

"Medic wanted me to try a shot," Sniper said. 

RED spy rolled his eyes. "Is there a trap you won't walk into? Oh, come on. Try to be gracious. It is an expensive habit, saving people. When I must, I save a teammate, but it is only professional." 

"I said I had other things to do," Sniper growled. "He had an aerosol already. Least it got us both." And it had been fascinating to see Medic trying to pull himself up to his desk so he could take notes on how he was reacting. At least the strange patches had mostly faded away.

"What did you have to ask him about?" 

"Mm, nothing," said the Sniper, grabbing the spy's arm for a moment to keep himself steady. "Oh, sorry." 

"I will wear it to battle tomorrow and respawn can take it. What is this?" 

"Dunno, it was in a dish he had covered." 

"If it is not the enemy bleeding on my suit, or the Engineer feeding the team's clothing into his bizarre shredding machine, it is you flinging some new disgusting fluid at me." The spy didn't sound as angry as he'd expected. "Keep moving. If you pass out here, Heavy will find you, and he will probably decide you belong in observation." 

"Doesn't make any sense," the sniper said.

"What doesn't?" 

"They're not clones, or we aren't, but what are we then? Or them. Or him. Or you." 

"Did he try to clone you?" Sniper wondered if the most disturbing thing about this evening was the complete lack of surprise. 

"No," he said. He reached up with his non-sticky hand, turning the spy's jaw a little despite the wrong color of the balaclava, looking at the planes of his face. "How many spies are there?" 

"Countless, I am sure." 

"No," he allowed himself to be led, "how many Spies? How many French, cigarette-smoking men with his voice and your build and-" 

"Sh." The spy dragged him along. "You should rest. This will seem very different in the morning." 

"Don't understand." 

"Hush." 

He woke up in the morning lying in the little room he used when he wasn't sleeping outside. He was still fully dressed, his foot asleep from the way the cuff of his boot pressed into his calf. The door had been locked, somehow. 

There was something in that, a promise of trustworthiness. A hint that he was something other than an asset that two rivals were fighting over, a token piece in a machine. When he closed his eyes, he could still see the shape of a RED sniper out for a stroll, casually walking along a trail below himself.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This seems like a good time to leave Sniper muddling about and follow Spy.

I could not set both feet outside Respawn without dying. It was our turn to dispose of our intel, and we weren't getting anywhere. I could hear their Engineer, temptingly close, singing some kind of terrible yokel's ditty about promenading around stars, but every time I picked a new path outside there was a horrible interruption. 

This latest one was the RED spy, and although I dodged his first slash, he stepped back just far enough for the scout to see I was there and step in. I respawned quickly enough that he was still whooping outside when I stood, but I could hear our soldier go down and our heavy calling for the medic in desperate tones. We may not be able to cheaply dispose of our intel today. At least they could not get it easily...

My sniper was doing excellent work. Rushing out into the open meant getting cut down by their team, but hanging back in the doorway meant a sudden return to a place twelve feet behind. Medic gave up on following anyone, healing those who rushed past him, but just cocking his head and listening as they died. 

"Could you do something more useful than that, I wonder?" I asked.

He flicked the beam over me. "I will get us a period of invulnerability. And their pyro is not outside the door, just now. Either he is waiting for me, or he is back imagining that you are close to their engineer." 

I ran for the door. It must have been while Sniper was firing off a suppression shot just to keep anyone off that hall, because I caught a shot cleanly and woke up to the medic kicking me in the side. "Cut yourself, will you? It will build faster if it has more to do." 

"Doctor!" Heavy appeared, already scrambling up. "Come, Doctor! We must push!"

"Yes, I have it," said the medic, trotting along after him. Wary, he set off the charge before he stepped into Sniper's line of sight. I paused a moment. I could take the occasional odd day, understood his predicament if he did not treat me like any other enemy on the field... but to have him constantly thwart me alongside the RED spy was a bitter pill. 

The other sniper groaned, sitting up behind me. "Crikey." 

I offered him a hand. He was not so bad, and the mark on his cheek was a useful distinction between them. "What is it?" 

"Keep getting past their soldier and trying to take that turret out with bullets, but he keeps leaving his machines behind and cutting around to find me." 

"Together," I said. "It is easily fixed." 

His lips thinned, but he nodded. I cloaked and followed him. He scrambled out, not invisibly but wisely, using the scout's antics as a distraction to get him out behind the rocks. From there it was a thin, winding path, using the stones as cover, until he leaned out and lined up a shot. He reloaded as quickly as he could, but I could see the engineer flanking us. 

That awful jolt to the middle of the back, the knife sinking to the side of his fist, never gets any less shocking. I shoved at the sniper's shoulder in warning, but the engineer was already swinging around the rock with his shotgun up. When I sat up in spawn, he was beside me a moment later. 

"Heavy's still up," he said. I realized the sound of that gun was still ongoing. That could mean the tide of battle was shifting, and I sprinted after. We let the others take the lead, this time, hanging back but assisting when we had the opportunity. My love picked me off when I was circling their scout, a few seconds off from a decisive blow. I woke up in respawn feeling rather bitter about it. It had been a perfect shot, I had little to complain of there, but to do nothing because my lover was always stopping me was grating. 

I thought about the ferry. The best way to get to town was to take a ferry to the nearest civilized patch on the mainland, then drive... and both teams took the ferry, without bothering to work out schedules or formalize the ceasefire. I had spent several pleasantly imagining pushing scouts into the water and holding them under, but one evening I had seen a seabird land on the barge, and mentioned it, and he had answered me. Little conversations, more casual words. And then the breakdown of my car, and his offer of a shortcut... and no attempt on my life the whole walk back, to my vague surprise.

One thing after another after another, until we came here, with no clear path forward. 

I cloaked. I would have to follow invisibly after this sniper until the spy tired of searching for me and went after him. And I nearly got him, but some instinct made him check over his shoulder. He fought viciously, driven, kicking the sniper away when he tried to intervene. 

"Something to prove?" I asked. 

"Die again," he said, lunging gracefully. Fortunately, while this sniper was not so good in close-range combat, he was not a disgrace either, and the spy had to fling himself out a window to aid below. I was leaning out to give pursuit when syringes quarreled through the air and caught me in the arm and face. Cursing, not willing to risk the drug, I fell back. 

We made a glorious last-ditch effort, but the heavy, medic, and pyro were all wiped from the map before I could cause enough trouble to get us near the mine pit. I fell back, disarmed, looking for a safe place to hide until the doors around the battlefield unlocked and we could go back to our bases. 

I could hear footsteps, some rushed, some careful, my team trying to slip back by any door they could. A voice nearby, and I listened carefully, trying to guess which team that was. "Hey there, Truckie." Damn. It must be the RED sniper. Making that the RED engineer, or he wouldn't sound so friendly. I backed away. 

"Now, that looked pretty painful out there. A rout, I'd say. First time in a long time." 

"You make a couple improvements to that junk heap?" 

The engineer laughed. "I've got a patent on that. Want to weasel trade secrets out of me, you're gonna have to work a lot harder." 

Sniper was starting to respond, but I was away enough to run, and fled.

He was waiting beside the ferry. Or, he wasn't. I could tell it in a moment, by the way he moved when he stepped forward, by the arrogant tilt of his head. My Sniper gives away very little by the way he walks, but the spy has a kind of cat's grace that he has never learned to blunt. I had probably showed, in turn, that I did not believe the disguise. 

"Not BLU's best showing," I said anyway.

"Indeed not," he said, and although the disguise held and it was the Sniper's voice, he was not bothering to adapt his accent in the slightest. I had given away a reaction, then. "I begin to wonder if you ever have plans for anything." He reached into the sniper's vest and pulled out his own cigarette case, tapping one out and lighting it. 

"I have many plans, and few concern you." 

He raised a brow, a quirk my Sniper had not mastered. "And how are you going to make your way to them?" 

"I only signed the contract for-"

He laughed. "The contract? You think that's worth the," he waved the cigarette, "the bytes it is coded in?" 

"Mine is paper."

"I signed with an identification number. I suppose RED must have some technological advantage... which is neither here nor there. I doubt that respawn would let you go, Monsieur. Any accident, any assassin from your employers or mine, and you would be back on the battlefield with quite the absence to answer for."

"It must have a range."

"And on the first team that I was assigned to, our medic could not find it. I never did find out what happened to him, but since he tried to leave once more, I doubt our employers allowed him to keep using the service he hated so much." He smiled, strolling up, putting two fingers under my chin. "No, this game is winner take all. And I do not have his friends' blood on my hands, and it is not my colors that wrap your body in his nightmares." 

"Nonetheless, the game is on." I lit a cigarette of my own, the movement knocking his hand away. "Did you come only to tell me that?" 

"I was wondering if your loyalties were important to you. I suppose not. Perhaps I would be willing to go through a few channels, and find, perhaps, if we had need of another spy. You leave on respawn, you enter ours." 

"Or I leave one and you leave my body cooling on the ground." 

"You would not need to hammer out the details with me. I am sure that the formalities, the contracts," it left his lips like an obscenity, "all the little niceties would go through RED." 

There was no point in refusing; letting him know where he stood would remove a shield of uncertainty from me. So I spoke without committing myself to anything, and let our speech be interrupted by the presence of the ferry and its truculent captain. 

It only struck me on the ferry ride back, alone. He was afraid the sniper might defect.


	7. Chapter 7

It was bound to happen sometime.

He'd heard the whisper of movement behind him, felt the knife's flat brush against the back of his neck. It had been all adrenaline that brought him out of his seat, just as the announcer's voice had called the victory for RED. It had been all a jumble: the sound of his heartbeat in his ears, the grab he'd made, the hand at his neck and in his hair and the mouth against his. And he hadn't had time to decide which. Still didn't; either could be that forceful. For a moment he'd clutched the back of a jacket like he could pull it off and find red or blue stained over the skin, and then the spy had ripped away, to hide or let his disguise dissipate, leaving the Sniper flushed and shaken in the fading sunlight. Unaccountably guilty. No need for that; they'd both known someday one of them would slip on giving the password first or RED would find a vulnerable moment. He had license to play along with RED's games and if it had been BLU, no harm done. 

But he knew exactly why he put his weapons away neatly, counting each arrow he had left, and packed up and went straight outside. They were nearing the last of the projects RED wanted to smash to smithereens at the bottom of a pit. If he wanted to find out how, exactly, RED spy was being in two places at once, he had better get tracking. 

He hunted for hours, casting back and forth for a shadow out of place or a long-limbed figure crossing the trails. It was an unwelcome shock when he actually saw himself.

He paused for a long moment, just looking. It was him. That was his shirt down to the badge on his sleeve, that was his way of catching himself as he clambered down a long slope in a clothes-shredding way that no spy would ever condescend to. That was his way of moving the fastest when the wind picked up, his sideways tracks back and forth up the mountainside. He followed, the hairs on his neck raised. He'd tracked spies by nothing more than invisible footsteps in the dust, and that had been less eerie.

The flicker of distant firelight distracted him, bringing him back to himself, and although he had no idea of why he nevertheless began to draw suspicions together, as if he were collecting them in their own little quiver. He could hear the first careless strumming of notes. He circled around the doppelganger, sliding down into the bushes. He settled down with a twig poking in his ribs and little flies swarming him, but didn't notice any of it. The music stopped.

"Evenin', Down Under."

"Evening, Truckie." God, that had been him a hundred times. 

He heard a clinking, the sound of a bottle of beer being uncapped. "Things settling down for you?" 

His own little laugh reached his ears. He gritted his teeth and started crawling forward. A hunched pine, bent by the wind, made perfect cover. He could see both of them perfectly, but it wasn't until the sniper turned his head to spit that he _knew._ "Not by a long shot." 

"Starting to wonder about that. It's going to boil over soon, with all three of them taking risks." The engineer reached for his guitar. The arrow reached it first. They both jerked back, jumping up.

"Take it easy, now, son," the engineer said. They'd both tracked the angle back to him, and they could both see the arrow drawn, pointed at the sniper by the fire. He couldn't dodge in time, and there was no way he could bring the rifle up. 

"You bloody traitor." He could see the slash on the man's cheek, pale as he stared down the arrow. But he wasn't speaking to that man. 

"Hey, now, hey! That's the pot to the kettle, isn't it? Come on out, an' let's talk this out by civilized gentlemen. Have I gone trackin' you an'... however many spies down to shoot them in front of ya?" 

"What do you mean, however many?" The sniper snapped. "There's just two." He flushed. "I mean, one." It was hard to keep looking threatening against those expressions, and despite himself he half relaxed the bow. "That's my shirt! And my bloody trousers! You told me you'd shredded them and you gave them to the enemy instead!"

"Well, yeah," the engineer said, scratching his neck. "With everyone lookin' all over for fancy spy gear an' cloakin' an' such, I thought, 'what makes the RED sniper the RED sniper? An' it's that he's always wearin' red. Everyone else's clothes was just collateral damage. Dammit, come sit down. Don't we have enough enemies, you an' me?" 

"Were you setting me up?" 

"No. He's just come out here to talk to me. Nothin' draws attention faster than subterfuge around here." The engineer tipped his head to the rock the demoman usually took when he came down to the fire. The sniper kept his fingers tight on the arrow and let the bowstring relax. But when he came into the firelight, he sat across the fire, where he could kick the coals towards his counterpart and lunge with the knife if he need to. The engineer went on. "I got into sleight of hand when I was a boy, keep the bigger kids from bullyin' me. Guess that way of thinkin' never quite leaves." The sniper eyed his counterpart. They were closer in appearance than he'd realized, at least alike as the spies. 

"That my clone?"

"The answer's no, not really, or maybe yes, but still not really. You're not clones, you're... replacements. Neither one of you is the first sniper. He's..." the engineer paused, opening a beer. "He could have gone back to his folks, for all I know. Here. You'd better drink this." 

It was the same pack he'd always gotten beer from, so Sniper had a quick drink. "Go on." 

"See, Respawn is Respawn because it was never Spawn in the first place. What happened was... this is just my theory, mind, I never did get to be part of puttin' it together. Best I can tell, I'm not the first engineer, you see." He paused. "Picture the universe as a whole bunch of realities, all branchin' off an' forkin' into different directions with every little choice through history. You'd get an infinite number, and that means an infinite chance for realities to have a respawn machine. There has to be one in the reality for it to work, because it works by pushin' people in an pullin' them out an' rebuildin' em like the medic's beams do. You die in this one, and it just reaches out to another reality where you miraculously didn't die for just long enough. In most of 'em you did, but with an infinite number there's gotta be a miracle survival. So the machines just trade you off. In that one, you're gone like you died, and you show up here." 

He could see his sober face listening across the fire before the scarred sniper dared to take another sip of beer. It reminded him to do the same. "So I've actually died? Completely?" 

"Maybe not yet. I think if you're actually dead it can't put you together anymore... unless there's some realities where it actually can. You're not from this one, though. RED an' BLU go to mighty great lengths to keep their technology old-fashioned just so we have less little clues to tip us off. You know how I finally figured it out? My old slide rule. I had it sent from a safe-deposit box and there was my signature on it-" 

"Just it was the wrong one." His contract. RED spy's contract. BLU spy's contract. All different, and all different than they'd remembered. Funny little detail for the engineer to somehow learn and spin into his story. 

"If it's any comfort..." the engineer paused. "I got a theory. Like I said before, before I realized you were the rock hittin' the spies' beehive," the scarred sniper snorted, and they both glared, "I'd need another PhD to sort this mess out. But I know a couple of you pretty well, an' I think that we're gettin' to be the limitin' factor in how far the machines can reach. If another sniper respawns now, he's got to be from a reality where I've had a lot of, well, history, whichever team he's on." 

"History."

"Hey, now, I haven't put all my cards on the table but you can't say I ain't done square by you, either." The engineer drank a quick gulp of his own beer. "Now look. Since there's maybe an infinite number of realities, there could be an infinite number where I've had all the talks I have with both of you. But maybe it's gettin' harder to reach across all of them to support all our networks, especially since you're tangled up with both spies as far as I can tell-" he held up the bottle to forestall another splutter. "Look, that just ain't my business, you let me keep explainin'. The machines are havin' to work harder, I think, an' the glitches are stackin' up... or maybe they were always goin' to as a side result of so many alternate goin's-on gettin' all tied up together. Like I said, I don't have the expertise required, an' even if I did I'd need some other engineers and I'm not sure I like where that's goin'." 

"So what are you getting at?" He was willing to follow the trail for now, but if it was just going to lead into a long distraction he wasn't going to listen. 

"Every so often we get glitches. An' there aren't enough spaces here for everyone. When was the last time your parents said anythin' you haven't heard before? Cause I think my little numbers I call... I think they've got recordin's answering. An' I think you an' him," he drew Sniper's attention to his counterpart for the first time, "are callin' the same number to talk to the same voices, cause I've heard him fightin' and I've seen you stalkin' around after callin' home."

"Holy dooley." 

"Yeah. So..." the engineer took another long gulp of beer. "You can see where I'm gettin' concerned. Sometimes we get two people respawnin' off one death. Sometimes they show up out of nowhere. Everyone ignores it, RED or BLU pulls 'em off and sticks 'em with another team where they're not so familiar. But the closer and closer the realities get that we're pullin' people from, well, the more worried I am we're gonna have some kind of bigger instability." 

Sniper swallowed. "Mum and Dad..." 

"Probably still alive out there. We've been fightin' and dyin' a long time, son." 

Another thought occurred. "Then I don't have a bank account." 

"Mine jumps all over the place. BLU's pretty slow to explain all their changes, but I think the docked pay and the bonuses are both there to cover up who's makin' what withdrawals. At least until they die." 

"I told him to reroute his checks, but I only just figured out some of what's goin' on myself."

"So how do I get out?" 

The engineer took another gulp of his bottle. "Best I can tell? You just walk away."

"You're trying to set me up." 

"God's honest truth, son. I'll be doing it myself when I've built up enough that won't send the first engineer lookin' out for me. You think they can track you? They have a bit of a personnel problem. You're replaced every time you die, sometimes twice, an' they got more of you than they know what to do with. It could take them a long time to realize you didn't just get pulled out the same way others like you just keep droppin' in." He paused. "I could use your skills, myself. If I want to get out, an' he wants to get out, it might be pretty handy to have a double for him. We'd keep your identity hidden, you'd be a decoy an' a backup shot." 

"We could even use a spook." 

"That Spy is pretty handy when he puts his mind to it. Course, trustin' a spy's a damn tall order, but if he knows some other spy's already retired on his earnin's, that might change things." 

His head was spinning, and he finally risked just a moment to rub his temples. "Wait. What happens next time I die?" 

The engineer chugged the rest of his bottle and tossed it aside. "Tell you the truth, I just don't know. I think if we put it off long enough, we won't be on any realities in the battlefield, compared to how many must be alike, an' maybe no machines will bother." 

"You know," the Sniper said, "the one thing I can't get around is that the person telling me this is the one that was fooling me with magic tricks."

"There's one thing that's not an illusion," said the sniper on the other side of the fire. He took a long drink of his bottle. "The machines clean up the bodies. Even the real ones. Every time you've seen him die, felt him die... if you admit any of that was right, you know that was really it."


End file.
